AnimeSuki Forums

MukiEX · 2010-02-07, 04:16

Rather than hijack the iPad thread, I figured I'd start a new one for this hopeful little device. First off, I'll start with specs for people who haven't heard of this thing:

Technical Specs
Photo of the current prototype

In all honesty, there's two key specs that bear interest:

1. Qi3 screen by Pixel Qi.

Spoiler for info:

2. Tegra 2 by Nvidia.

Spoiler for info:

What we have here seems like a device that could very well make the ultimate Anime-watching and Ebook/Manga-reading device. Its 2-page capabilities will admittedly not be as nice as its 1-page (clarity is the same as the Kindle, but therefore not as good as the Kindle DX). The only reason I haven't pre-ordered this device yet is mainly due to the sad lack of info we have on it. While the hardware seems perfect, there's a few things about it that we don't know yet.

H.264 limitations of the Tegra 2. 1080p HP 5.1 @ 16 ref. frames might exceed this box's capabilities
It runs on Android, for better or worse. As such, a big point of contingency is the video player app. Will it actually support MKV, multiple audio tracks, chapters, and softsubs? Vobsubs?
The price and release date.

The last point, at least, we'll find out about during the Mobile World Congress that takes place on February 15th through the 18th. While I have high hopes for a $400 device I can casually read books 'n manga on, then watch some anime and even connect it to a friend's HDTV and keep watching, it's anyone's guess as to how good the software is, and if the Tegra 2 will be as good as Nvidia's ION in the H.264 sector.

I hope this info dump was helpful. Hopefully after MWC we'll know enough to see if this thing becomes the end-all entertainment center/book tablet or if we'll have to settle for it being an end-most e-reader replacement. Plus we'll finally find out if Android doesn't feel like ass on a device running on a competent ARM platform

milan kyuubi · 2010-02-07, 04:48

Here are some more informations for Notion Ink Adam hands-on

MukiEX · 2010-02-07, 04:59

I was gonna post one of those (there were a few at CES, notably your Slashgear link), but it felt like I was going too far, as I would have had to post a disclaimer as well (assuming they didn't cover it in the vid or article).

- The final model of the Adam will have a matte finish, and probably (sadly, IMHO) come substantially thinner than the prototype at CES.

The battery life they list is crazy, too. At 160 hours for HD video playback with the backlight off, I can only imagine how good it is via HDMI. It wouldn't even be like a notebook, where you bring it to a friend's house, connect to an HDMI cable snagged off the PS3 or Xbox, and reach around back looking for a spare power port to charge with. You just plug the HDMI cable in and call it a day.

Actually, thinking about it now... while I'm not sure that 160 hour figure is on the money (Nvidia quoted 16 hours on 2 watts, and the Qi3 uses 0.2 watts w/o backlight, so they just multiplied, as if the Tegra didn't use up any power whatsoever), but it's probably near or higher than that if you're not simply watching HD video non-stop. At that point, it has roughly half the battery life of the Kindle, which lasts a week surfing wireless (3g?) and two weeks offline. That's impressive, to say the least. FINAL EDIT: Hmmm, seem's Nvidia's figures for battery life between MP3 playback and HD playback scale similarly for a screen using 0.4 watts, so I really doubt the Adam's gonna get anywhere NEAR 100 hours. Still, 16-32 hours for HD playback via HDMI would make it an easy end-all device for me. Just really hoping on that MKV/softsub support in the OS >_<

0utf0xZer0 · 2010-02-07, 17:13

The Geforce 9 graphics architecture that Tegra 2's graphics are supposedly derived from supported L5.1 videos, but I'm not sure if that particular capability will have made into Tegra 2 itself.

And yeah, Pixel Qi looks like very cool tech, although I've heard that the viewing angles in colour mode aren't as good as a good LCD - not sure how it compares to typical LCDs, which tend to have poor viewing angles themselves compared to good LCDs.

(And the explanation in the video of how much light passes through screen coatings as opposed to being reflected and such actually explains why my first laptop sucked in sunlight despite having a matte screen.)

synaesthetic · 2010-02-07, 19:23

It runs Android now. Notion Ink will eventually put a modified version of Ubuntu Mobile on it, which means the use of mplayer is pretty much assured.

MukiEX · 2010-02-07, 23:03

The two big misconceptions I've heard repeated online that I'm not entirely sure are true are Tegra 2 having a G90-derived core and the Adam having Ubuntu as an option. Nowhere in any of the Tegra 2 materials do they list the former and in none of the Adam's official info (interviews, the Notion Ink blog) do they list that Ubuntu will be an option.

The latter might be more likely. Notion Ink is a startup, and smaller companies tend not to pull the BS that the larger firms will do, such as locking-off the hardware (Tivoization, is it?). The Zune HD also features an Ubuntu-capable Tegra but I doubt it'll happen, and even if it does, that it'll be an easy installation. On the flipside, the OMAP3-powered "Touchbook" didn't have any mention of alternate OS's and three months after release they have Android and Ubuntu as boot-time options.

However, the former, I've heard varying reports about, with most people saying it's far closer, both in performance and capabilities, to the Geforce 5/6 line than it is to a Geforce 9400. Given that the 9400M in the ION line still gets hot and is substantially larger than the entire Tegra chip (which is GPU, 1080p decoder, 1080p encoder, and two arm chips all in one), this seems to be the case. Either way, mind you, it still stands to be a monster, just not a CUDA-equipped monster. The 9400M can't encode in 1080p, which is definitely something to behold.

As mentioned before, I'm just hoping the 1080p decode is on par with the 9400M's. They both have it in the form of extremely precise, tiny, dedicated circuitry (contrary to popular belief, the CUDA series of cards don't decode H.264 or VC-1 via CUDA, but rather through dedicated circuitry, and use CUDA for post-processing enhancements like de-interlacing. This is why they never "backported" video accel to the 8800GTS/GTX or VC-1 to the Geforce 8 line in general), and they both have a healthy chunk of RAM, so my hopes are pretty high that we'll have something that doesn't flinch at anything 1080p and down.

For what it's worth, 16 reference frames at 1080p in 24-bit color take up a hair under 95 megabytes, so a card with access to 512 megs or a gig (usually shared mem on the latter) should easily have enough breathing room for the sky to be the limit as far as video decode is concerned.

synaesthetic · 2010-02-08, 13:16

I know I read on Notion Ink's blog that they intend the Adam to run Ubuntu Mobile, as Android is a smartphone OS and not designed for tablets with big screens.

It looks like the line has been removed from the blog, though. However I doubt very seriously that will prevent us from installing whatever the hell we want on it.

MukiEX · 2010-02-09, 03:34

One thing, tho. Even if they do implement Ubuntu, mplayer isn't going to matter. I mean, it'll be nice as a fall-back on SD formats, but when it comes to 720p/1080p stuff, mplayer's really not gonna cut it.

The thing is, at least on ARM platforms (OMAP/Tegra), the standard for video acceleration, or more specifically, DSP access, is OpenMAX, which, IIRC, links to Gstreamer or DirectShow. Obviously, being Linux, we don't care much for DirectShow, but Gstreamer's player support isn't universal, obviously. We'll probably be limited to Totem ATM.

However, being Gstreamer-based is in no way a bad thing. The nice thing about gstreamer is that it's modular. e.g. every piece, such as the H.264 hardware decoder or a software MKV splitter, can run completely independently, plugged together almost like Lego. As such, it won't matter if the chip can't split MKV natively (as is the case with most chips, and my best guess as to why .3gp and .mp4 are the defaults for most smart/media phones). The ARM units will be in charge of mkv splitting, subtitle rendering, and possibly even audio playback, while the H.264/VC-1 decoder can stick to doing its job.

I sent Nvidia the whole "H.264 limits" question, and hopefully they'll get back to me on that one

synaesthetic · 2010-02-09, 11:42

mplayer shouldn't have a problem as long as the Tegra GPU is compatible with VDPAU. It is an nvidia core, after all...

MukiEX · 2010-02-09, 15:28

Ah, but therein lies the rub. VDPAU isn't featured on Tegra chips and Nvidia has no plans on implementing it. OpenMax seems to be the route they plan on taking with it.

Source

For what it's worth, gstreamer (which I believe is what OpenMax enhances) has long since added proper support for SSA/ASS. Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and the bug is listed as "RESOLVED/FIXED" as of version 0.10.11, during March of last year.

Edit Note TEXT WALL OF DOOM: I think what we need is some sort of "chart" to keep track of all the capabilities (and more importantly, limitations) of all the various video accel flavors out there.

I mean, on Ati we've got the Avivo, UVD, UVD2, and UVD2.2 series.
For Nvidia we have the PureVideo, PureVideoHD/VDPAU, and even VDPAU has A, B, and C profiles.
Intel's got the GMA 500 (which apparently manages lower CPU usage than even VDPAU)
There's Broadcom's Crystal HD, which is as compatible as compatible can be (at the cost of not saving as much CPU % as the previous formats)
Oh, and even S3 has a couple of chips out that support video acceleration.

And that's before we even get to Tegra and OMAP.

A nice chart featuring limits:
- Profile, Level, ref. frames being the big 3 for H.264.
- I think we just need level for VC-1
- And of course max/sustained bitrates for both (I've seen some clips get as high as 50-60 for a movie that averages 8-10)
- And of course, plain resolution limits for the ARM platforms
- Oooh, and "compositing" limitations might also be important from said ARM platforms

Another nice chart featuring OS support:
- Windows/Linux/(ugh)OSX, tho at the moment I think the only OSX support is the Geforce 9400M (Kinda) and the Crystal HD
- Just how good "the driver situation" is. GMA 500 has great support, provided you stick to Ubuntu Hardy, as it works on eff-all else (tho apparently that's subject to change soon). Nvidia has VDPAU and VAAPI via a wrapper, and Ati only has VAAPI (via same wrapper)

The latter would be a lot more important for the mobile platforms, as some people might be looking at Android w/o knowing that the support might not be as broad-reaching as, say, an ARM Ubuntu install, and of course, that's limited to devices that support custom OS's in the first place (monumentally less of a given than it is on x86, of course)

MukiEX · 2010-06-14, 15:49

So I found this on the Tegra 2 dev forums today:

"From what I've been told, the Tegra2 does not support high profile H.264. For some reason, they don't seem to want to talk about this."

Not from a developer, and I hope this info's wrong. While this won't ruin the Adam for me, it could be a major show stopper on the Boxee Box (which also uses Tegra 2).

2010-02-07, 04:16	Link #1
MukiEX Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2010	The Notion Ink Adam Rather than hijack the iPad thread, I figured I'd start a new one for this hopeful little device. First off, I'll start with specs for people who haven't heard of this thing: Technical Specs Photo of the current prototype In all honesty, there's two key specs that bear interest: 1. Qi3 screen by Pixel Qi. Spoiler for info: 1024x600 (16:9 widescreen). What makes this particular screen so special is that killing its backlight (Adam will have a button for this) puts the screen in a sort of Black & White "E-Ink" mode that looks fine in direct sunlight and can be read both outdoors and indoors. As the backlight is the primary battery drainer of screens and portable devices with screens in general, this will go a long way to make it a useful book/manga-reading device. Relevant video. Note that the "transflective screen" in the $2000 laptop is marketed as an "outdoor screen", and that, while the Qi3 doesn't look as nice as the Kindle, it's a regular LCD screen, meaning that it's still a smooth 60hz display in that mode. 2. Tegra 2 by Nvidia. Spoiler for info: This is an ARM-based chip, has a few big capabilities you might find interesting. For one, it's capable of accelerating 1080p H.264/VC-1 video. For two, it's capable of encoding 1080p H.264 video (1080p is about 2 megapixels, and the Adam has a 3 megapixel camera. Useful.) What we have here seems like a device that could very well make the ultimate Anime-watching and Ebook/Manga-reading device. Its 2-page capabilities will admittedly not be as nice as its 1-page (clarity is the same as the Kindle, but therefore not as good as the Kindle DX). The only reason I haven't pre-ordered this device yet is mainly due to the sad lack of info we have on it. While the hardware seems perfect, there's a few things about it that we don't know yet. H.264 limitations of the Tegra 2. 1080p HP 5.1 @ 16 ref. frames might exceed this box's capabilities It runs on Android, for better or worse. As such, a big point of contingency is the video player app. Will it actually support MKV, multiple audio tracks, chapters, and softsubs? Vobsubs? The price and release date. The last point, at least, we'll find out about during the Mobile World Congress that takes place on February 15th through the 18th. While I have high hopes for a $400 device I can casually read books 'n manga on, then watch some anime and even connect it to a friend's HDTV and keep watching, it's anyone's guess as to how good the software is, and if the Tegra 2 will be as good as Nvidia's ION in the H.264 sector. I hope this info dump was helpful. Hopefully after MWC we'll know enough to see if this thing becomes the end-all entertainment center/book tablet or if we'll have to settle for it being an end-most e-reader replacement. Plus we'll finally find out if Android doesn't feel like ass on a device running on a competent ARM platform

2010-02-07, 04:48	Link #2
milan kyuubi Call me MK! :) Graphic Designer Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: The top of the world. Age: 34	Here are some more informations for Notion Ink Adam hands-on __________________ My Twitter account! *Thanks to* Godlike1889 *for the sig*!

2010-02-07, 04:59	Link #3
MukiEX Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2010	I was gonna post one of those (there were a few at CES, notably your Slashgear link), but it felt like I was going too far, as I would have had to post a disclaimer as well (assuming they didn't cover it in the vid or article). - The final model of the Adam will have a matte finish, and probably (sadly, IMHO) come substantially thinner than the prototype at CES. The battery life they list is crazy, too. At 160 hours for HD video playback with the backlight off, I can only imagine how good it is via HDMI. It wouldn't even be like a notebook, where you bring it to a friend's house, connect to an HDMI cable snagged off the PS3 or Xbox, and reach around back looking for a spare power port to charge with. You just plug the HDMI cable in and call it a day. Actually, thinking about it now... while I'm not sure that 160 hour figure is on the money (Nvidia quoted 16 hours on 2 watts, and the Qi3 uses 0.2 watts w/o backlight, so they just multiplied, as if the Tegra didn't use up any power whatsoever), but it's probably near or higher than that if you're not simply watching HD video non-stop. At that point, it has roughly half the battery life of the Kindle, which lasts a week surfing wireless (3g?) and two weeks offline. That's impressive, to say the least. FINAL EDIT: Hmmm, seem's Nvidia's figures for battery life between MP3 playback and HD playback scale similarly for a screen using 0.4 watts, so I really doubt the Adam's gonna get anywhere NEAR 100 hours. Still, 16-32 hours for HD playback via HDMI would make it an easy end-all device for me. Just really hoping on that MKV/softsub support in the OS >_< Last edited by MukiEX; 2010-02-07 at 08:36.

2010-02-07, 17:13	Link #4
0utf0xZer0 Pretentious moe scholar Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Vancouver, Canada Age: 37	The Geforce 9 graphics architecture that Tegra 2's graphics are supposedly derived from supported L5.1 videos, but I'm not sure if that particular capability will have made into Tegra 2 itself. And yeah, Pixel Qi looks like very cool tech, although I've heard that the viewing angles in colour mode aren't as good as a good LCD - not sure how it compares to typical LCDs, which tend to have poor viewing angles themselves compared to good LCDs. (And the explanation in the video of how much light passes through screen coatings as opposed to being reflected and such actually explains why my first laptop sucked in sunlight despite having a matte screen.) __________________ Signature courtesy of Ganbaru.

2010-02-07, 19:23	Link #5
synaesthetic blinded by blood Author Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Oakland, CA Age: 40	It runs Android now. Notion Ink will eventually put a modified version of Ubuntu Mobile on it, which means the use of mplayer is pretty much assured. __________________ Indie science fiction author and all-around weirdo: Check out my original fiction here! Read an excerpt from my sci-fi novel Binary System!

2010-02-07, 23:03	Link #6
MukiEX Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2010	The two big misconceptions I've heard repeated online that I'm not entirely sure are true are Tegra 2 having a G90-derived core and the Adam having Ubuntu as an option. Nowhere in any of the Tegra 2 materials do they list the former and in none of the Adam's official info (interviews, the Notion Ink blog) do they list that Ubuntu will be an option. The latter might be more likely. Notion Ink is a startup, and smaller companies tend not to pull the BS that the larger firms will do, such as locking-off the hardware (Tivoization, is it?). The Zune HD also features an Ubuntu-capable Tegra but I doubt it'll happen, and even if it does, that it'll be an easy installation. On the flipside, the OMAP3-powered "Touchbook" didn't have any mention of alternate OS's and three months after release they have Android and Ubuntu as boot-time options. However, the former, I've heard varying reports about, with most people saying it's far closer, both in performance and capabilities, to the Geforce 5/6 line than it is to a Geforce 9400. Given that the 9400M in the ION line still gets hot and is substantially larger than the entire Tegra chip (which is GPU, 1080p decoder, 1080p encoder, and two arm chips all in one), this seems to be the case. Either way, mind you, it still stands to be a monster, just not a CUDA-equipped monster. The 9400M can't encode in 1080p, which is definitely something to behold. As mentioned before, I'm just hoping the 1080p decode is on par with the 9400M's. They both have it in the form of extremely precise, tiny, dedicated circuitry (contrary to popular belief, the CUDA series of cards don't decode H.264 or VC-1 via CUDA, but rather through dedicated circuitry, and use CUDA for post-processing enhancements like de-interlacing. This is why they never "backported" video accel to the 8800GTS/GTX or VC-1 to the Geforce 8 line in general), and they both have a healthy chunk of RAM, so my hopes are pretty high that we'll have something that doesn't flinch at anything 1080p and down. For what it's worth, 16 reference frames at 1080p in 24-bit color take up a hair under 95 megabytes, so a card with access to 512 megs or a gig (usually shared mem on the latter) should easily have enough breathing room for the sky to be the limit as far as video decode is concerned.

2010-02-08, 13:16	Link #7
synaesthetic blinded by blood Author Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Oakland, CA Age: 40	I know I read on Notion Ink's blog that they intend the Adam to run Ubuntu Mobile, as Android is a smartphone OS and not designed for tablets with big screens. It looks like the line has been removed from the blog, though. However I doubt very seriously that will prevent us from installing whatever the hell we want on it. __________________ Indie science fiction author and all-around weirdo: Check out my original fiction here! Read an excerpt from my sci-fi novel Binary System!

2010-02-09, 03:34	Link #8
MukiEX Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2010	One thing, tho. Even if they do implement Ubuntu, mplayer isn't going to matter. I mean, it'll be nice as a fall-back on SD formats, but when it comes to 720p/1080p stuff, mplayer's really not gonna cut it. The thing is, at least on ARM platforms (OMAP/Tegra), the standard for video acceleration, or more specifically, DSP access, is OpenMAX, which, IIRC, links to Gstreamer or DirectShow. Obviously, being Linux, we don't care much for DirectShow, but Gstreamer's player support isn't universal, obviously. We'll probably be limited to Totem ATM. However, being Gstreamer-based is in no way a bad thing. The nice thing about gstreamer is that it's modular. e.g. every piece, such as the H.264 hardware decoder or a software MKV splitter, can run completely independently, plugged together almost like Lego. As such, it won't matter if the chip can't split MKV natively (as is the case with most chips, and my best guess as to why .3gp and .mp4 are the defaults for most smart/media phones). The ARM units will be in charge of mkv splitting, subtitle rendering, and possibly even audio playback, while the H.264/VC-1 decoder can stick to doing its job. I sent Nvidia the whole "H.264 limits" question, and hopefully they'll get back to me on that one

2010-02-09, 11:42	Link #9
synaesthetic blinded by blood Author Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Oakland, CA Age: 40	mplayer shouldn't have a problem as long as the Tegra GPU is compatible with VDPAU. It is an nvidia core, after all... __________________ Indie science fiction author and all-around weirdo: Check out my original fiction here! Read an excerpt from my sci-fi novel Binary System!

2010-02-09, 15:28	Link #10
MukiEX Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2010	Ah, but therein lies the rub. VDPAU isn't featured on Tegra chips and Nvidia has no plans on implementing it. OpenMax seems to be the route they plan on taking with it. Source For what it's worth, gstreamer (which I believe is what OpenMax enhances) has long since added proper support for SSA/ASS. Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and the bug is listed as "RESOLVED/FIXED" as of version 0.10.11, during March of last year. Edit Note TEXT WALL OF DOOM: I think what we need is some sort of "chart" to keep track of all the capabilities (and more importantly, limitations) of all the various video accel flavors out there. I mean, on Ati we've got the Avivo, UVD, UVD2, and UVD2.2 series. For Nvidia we have the PureVideo, PureVideoHD/VDPAU, and even VDPAU has A, B, and C profiles. Intel's got the GMA 500 (which apparently manages lower CPU usage than even VDPAU) There's Broadcom's Crystal HD, which is as compatible as compatible can be (at the cost of not saving as much CPU % as the previous formats) Oh, and even S3 has a couple of chips out that support video acceleration. And that's before we even get to Tegra and OMAP. A nice chart featuring limits: - Profile, Level, ref. frames being the big 3 for H.264. - I think we just need level for VC-1 - And of course max/sustained bitrates for both (I've seen some clips get as high as 50-60 for a movie that averages 8-10) - And of course, plain resolution limits for the ARM platforms - Oooh, and "compositing" limitations might also be important from said ARM platforms Another nice chart featuring OS support: - Windows/Linux/(ugh)OSX, tho at the moment I think the only OSX support is the Geforce 9400M (Kinda) and the Crystal HD - Just how good "the driver situation" is. GMA 500 has great support, provided you stick to Ubuntu Hardy, as it works on eff-all else (tho apparently that's subject to change soon). Nvidia has VDPAU and VAAPI via a wrapper, and Ati only has VAAPI (via same wrapper) The latter would be a lot more important for the mobile platforms, as some people might be looking at Android w/o knowing that the support might not be as broad-reaching as, say, an ARM Ubuntu install, and of course, that's limited to devices that support custom OS's in the first place (monumentally less of a given than it is on x86, of course) Last edited by MukiEX; 2010-02-09 at 19:21.

2010-06-14, 15:49	Link #11
MukiEX Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2010	So I found this on the Tegra 2 dev forums today: "From what I've been told, the Tegra2 does not support high profile H.264. For some reason, they don't seem to want to talk about this." Not from a developer, and I hope this info's wrong. While this won't ruin the Adam for me, it could be a major show stopper on the Boxee Box (which also uses Tegra 2).